Baby Stuff

If you search on Amazon for a baby swing, you will find more than 41,000 results. There are so many to see! How do you even start to find the best baby swing? My go-to criterion is always finding something with dual purpose. If I can buy something that accomplishes more than one goal, then I think I'm really getting my money’s worth. Sometimes that works... sometimes it doesn't, but that's how I started looking for the best baby swing. Best Baby Swing After searching through dozens of baby swing [...]

When we started having babies, I knew we would need some essential items. We looked for a floor mat, Jumperoo, and floor seat. We've already covered the floor mat and Jumperoo here on eciov, so now it's time to talk about the best baby floor seat. Bumbo was a household name -- everyone seemed to have one -- but one of my friends gave me a different recommendation. She had been using the Fisher Price Sit-Me-Up Floor Seat with her children and liked it enough to recommend it to me. I decided to gi [...]

Life was so easy when my son was in the “potted plant” stage. He was happy to sit on a blanket and play with the toys that he could reach. If he couldn’t reach a toy, he would just play with his toes. I didn’t have to worry about him venturing off somewhere if I needed a few seconds to grab laundry or feed the dog. Of course, this phase does not last forever. Eventually, he began to work on crawling and moving around. We have hard floors in the living room, so we needed some kind of soft surface [...]

Christmas has already come and gone, and a new year has arrived. We spent a quiet Christmas at home this year, and our son got to “open” his presents all day long. Since he’s 13 months old, he still didn’t quite get the excitement of presents. By the last gift, he finally tore the paper on his own and actually seemed to enjoy it. There was definitely one standout toy for the day that is continuing to be his go-to during playtime. This is the VTech Pull and Learn Car Carrier Pull Toy. My brother [...]

Baby bottles are a necessity for almost any family with an infant. Whether you’re a full-time bottle user or only need them every once in a while, you’ll want a place to wash and dry bottles, cups, pumping parts, etc. We don’t have a lot of counter space, so I knew we would need something that was compact. The ones that look like grass and flowers are cute, but you can only get so many parts on that green surface. That's why I set out to find the best baby bottle drying rack. What factors did we [...]

Once my son was about four months old, he wanted to stand up all the time. Since my husband and I run a business from home, we didn’t have the ability to hold him up all day -- nor did we think that would be healthy for his development. That meant it was time for us to find the best baby jumper. Originally, I wanted to get an Exersaucer. I saw that style a lot, so I assumed it must be the best baby jumper. After showing my husband a video of a baby jumping in an Exersaucer, he was completely aga [...]

It’s no secret that I loved swaddling my baby from the time he was born. He slept well and didn’t startle himself awake. He was also born in the late fall, so the swaddling kept him snug and warm during the cold nights. Eventually, I knew that I would need to stop swaddling my son, but I found very little information about the process during my research. After a few months, my friends started posting pictures of their young babies sleeping with no swaddle. I continued to swaddle my son because t [...]

When I found out I was pregnant, I went crazy with checklists. By the third trimester, we had almost everything on our lists. The one thing we couldn't decide, however, was the best baby monitor. Do we spend $30 on a cheap audio-only monitor with poor quality? Is it worth spending $200 or more on a single-function video monitor that we’ll only need for a year or so? In this modern world, we expected a better option. After extensive research, we found the best baby monitor was actually an iOS app [...]

To swaddle or not to swaddle… that's always a debate for new parents. I decided to swaddle my newborn based on my ridiculous amount of research and conversations I had with other parents. However, I had no idea that wrapping your kid in a burrito would be this complicated. My friends gave me five different swaddlers before my son was born—not just five blankets; they were all completely different swaddler styles! How was I supposed to know which would work best for my child? I spent hours watchi [...]

After bringing our first baby home from the hospital, I was in constant awe of how tiny and perfect his body was. He had the softest skin and hair, adorable toes and fingers, and perfectly shaped nails on each digit. However, it didn’t take much time before these adorable nails started growing out of control. Sometimes his nails would naturally peel off nicely, but he had a few of those vicious ones that just rip your chest to pieces. After my son scratched me (and his poor little face) a few ti [...]